Event Details

This is the sixth lecture in our new series Crystallography Matters! celebrating the 2014 International Year of Crystallography. Doors will open at 6pm for 6:30pm. The talk is aimed at age 16+ but all are welcome. More details of our lecture series are at http://www.maths.ed.ac.uk/~jcollins/crystallography/index.html.

Here is the abstract for the talk, given by Dr Stephen Moggach:

The use of porous materials is widespread, from water purification and gas storage, to catalysis and removal of harmful fission products from nuclear reactors. The size of the pores within these materials are essential for their selective properties, and as a consequence, researchers have spent much of their time making new and ever more extravagant materials.

Metal organic frameworks (or MOFs) are amongst those materials studied as they have extremely large surface areas and pore volumes. MOFs have shown promise as hydrogen storage devices, a subject of intense interest due to the World Energy crisis, and the global need to cut carbon dioxide emissions. X-ray crystallography has underpinned the development within this area, as it requires a detailed knowledge of the pore size and shape, something we can only deduce once we know where the atoms and molecules actually are.

In this talk, I will describe various crystallographic techniques which have allowed us, in an unprecedented fashion to gain insight into the selective behaviour of liquid and gases in porous materials, and what the future holds for porous materials.